5 ways Google Analytics can help you to "growth hack" your business
by Dr. Karandeep Singh, head of analytics and insights, Digital Annexe
Google Analytics is no doubt one of the most popular, powerful, and widely used platforms for measuring digital traffic and customer behaviour. Its comprehensive metrics, non-exhaustive data, and easy-to-use interface make it an invaluable resource for businesses in nearly all industries.
To get the best out of this amazing platform and to increase your online (and offline) sales and goals, you need to know what you’re doing. If used well, Google Analytics can allow for some strong “growth hacking” for your company.
Growth hacking is about leveraging user behaviour and data through testing and adapting your product to give users what they want and need, therefore resulting in online growth. By harnessing the powers of Google Analytics, and really understanding what information to pull from it, and what that information means, you could apply your learnings to your strategies to increase the growth rate of your business.
So if you want to you “growth hack” your business and then you need to take advantage of the capabilities of Google Analytics and to significantly grow your online revenue then here are the five most important ‘must haves’.
1. Mobile Traffic Behaviour in Audience Report Suite
Do you know how many users are coming from Mobile traffic (smart phones, tablets, Kindle, wearables, etc.)? Out of them, how many are converting? If they’re not converting, then why not? What are the 5 top performing mobile devices which are resulting in more sales (if any)?
All these, and many more, can be answered using Mobile reports in Google Analytics. By understanding all of the information coming from this report, and then applying what you learn to your strategies, you could see a significant rise in sales and revenue.
2. All Traffic Report in Acquisition Report Suite
Do you know who is sending users to your digital assets? Are you aware of those traffic sources which are sending ‘converters’ rather than ‘surfers’? Are you making the most of social? Are you just relying on email?
Well, this report will help you uncover some hidden ‘gems’ about the overall traffic coming to your websites. This information can be used to help you decide your overall digital strategy which will ultimately drive more and more digital sales and revenue.
3. All Pages Report under Site content section of the Behaviour Report Suite
Do you know whether the design and build of your creative landing pages/sign-up forms are producing results?
It’s about more than bounce rates; it’s about knowing which pages users are exiting from and why. This report can tell you actual real information about your users’ likes and dislikes. There could be many reasons behind bouncing and exiting, but if we can analyse the numbers to understand those trends and combinations and find user insights, we can then boost the Digital conversion rate.
4. Funnel Visualization under Goals section of the Conversions Report Suite
Taking the time to set up well thought out Goals in Google Analytics could reveal really insightful information which I call a ‘funnel treasure data’. Understanding traffic movement within the purchase funnel is always a challenge in itself. Even though at this stage users have made their decision to buy the product, only (up to) 25% will end up as purchasers. The funnel analysis can help discover where traffic may be dropping out, and what could be causing this to happen.
For example, asking a customer’s date of birth (such as for age restricted products) could have an impact on the funnel conversion, as many consider DOB as personal information so they could abandon a purchase at this point.
5. Attribution reports under Conversion Report Suite
Now this last one is for every C-Level person who suffers the dilemma of ‘how much shall I put in which pot’ during annual budget planning. The beautiful and clever attribution reports force you to use both the left and right parts of your brain simultaneously. These reports help you understand how different marketing (online-offline) channels work together to generate more sales and revenue.
Research around product-related online shopping or browsing behaviours is a complicated process as there are numerous touch-points during the process where users could be influenced by their social/domestic ecosystem.
When it comes to allocating marketing budget, it helps to understand how much should be spent on various channels and what should be expected from them in return. Due to the importance of attribution in general, I usually say that “the COI (cost of ignorance) is more important than ROI (return on investment)”.